Technical Field
This disclosure relates to data communication and networking More specifically, this disclosure relates to systems and techniques for supporting multiple multicast trees in TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) networks.
Related Art
The insatiable demand for bandwidth and the ever increasing size and complexity of computer networks has created a need for increasing the bandwidth and improving manageability of computer networks.
Computer networks often use multicasting to efficiently distribute high bandwidth content (e.g., streaming video) to multiple end-hosts in the network. In multicasting, copies of packets are forwarded over a multicast tree in the network. In some approaches, the network supports a single multicast tree for a given source and multicast address. For purposes of load balancing and failure recovery, it is generally desirable to support multiple multicast trees for a given source and multicast address. Unfortunately, supporting multiple multicast trees in the network can significantly increase the amount of resources required at each switch.